progress

Progress on the old kitchen garden bed and water bowl shelter

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To continue working on the low raised bed in the old kitchen garden, I couldn’t use the mini chainsaw any more – the batteries just don’t last long enough for a job like this.

It was time to break out the electric chain saw. It’s very handy. The only problem is that I was moving around so much to reach the corners, the extension cord was in the way.

It still made the job much easier and faster. There was one log that was so bumpy, I spent more time trying to smooth it out than all the rest of the work put together!

You can see in the background that the kittens had been playing in the soil on the tarp, spreading it out quite a bit!

The whole thing wasn’t very stable, though. Something needed to be done to stabilize it, so it wouldn’t fall apart when the soil was added.

I decided to sacrifice some of the plastic coated metal stakes that I’d used to hold hoops supporting netting over the spinach bed.

I used an auger bit to drill holes into each corner of the bed, then hammered in a length. A couple had to have excess length broken off, but I think the other two actually went all the way through and into the ground below.

This made the whole thing quite sturdy. Now I could start filling.

On top of the wood chips I’d added earlier, I added some of the contents of our compost pile. Vegetation, apple pieces from straining the apple cider vinegar, coffee grounds, and even a few eggshells went in.

Next was a layer of dry grass clippings. One of the logs at the end had a fair bit of space under it, so I stuffed it with some grass clippings, too. Then it all got a thorough soaking before the soil was returned.

Once the bed was full, soil was added around three side of it, to fill in the gaps left from digging out a larger hole than the bed itself.

Which, of course, a kitten promptly tried to use as a litter box!

Finally, some grass clippings were added to mulch the top, and it got another thorough watering. I was also able to clear off the stepping stones at each end.

This bed is now done, and ready for planting next year.

My next job will be to try and weed along the whole side of this garden, before we start figuring out the low wall we want to edge it with (my daughter wants to use rocks – we have lots of those!) and top it up with some of the leftover sifted soil. The next bed I want to work on, though, is the L shaped bed that goes around the double lilac. Even if it only gets a supporting wall on the inside of the L shape, that will help. Trying to work about that lilac bush is a pain, and there are so things trying to grow into the space from there. We’d already tried to remove so many roots over the past couple of years, but it’s just getting worse! As with this bed, the L shaped bed will be only 2 feet wide, except possibly the tip of the short part of the L shape, where it can be accessed from three sides and is already wider than the rest of the bed.

Little by little, this garden will eventually have all walled, low to middle height raised beds. I was wanting to make this our kitchen garden, with things like herbs and salad vegetables that get used the most often over the summer, in here. My younger daughter wants to make it into a flower garden. Considering most herbs have lovely flowers, I’m sure we can come up with a compromise. 😊

Speaking of my younger daughter, when I was done working here, I helped my daughter out with her project.

By stealing kittens.

You’ll notice one of them has yellow paws. My daughter was painting the water bowl shelter, and that kitten would NOT leave her alone! The only way to keep him out of the paint was to put him on her shoulders – which means her skin and the tank top she was wearing got paint, too!

The first coat is done. The underside won’t need another coat, except for the legs. She was able to crawl inside and paint there, too. Carefully, as the roof is resting on bricks to hold it off the ground, and it’s not particularly strong. I think she even got the floor done, as well as the underside of the roof. After the legs and walls get a couple of coats, we’ll flip it right side up again to do the roof and whatever else can be reached at that point.

I’m surprised more kittens didn’t end up with paint all over them. They really, really love playing in this thing! Once it’s done and set up with the water bowls, they’ll have three roofs they play on. 😁

When I picked the colour, I tried to get a yellow as close as I could to the colour used on the kibble house. I couldn’t remember where we’d bought the original paint from, so I figured it was a different brand’s colour and would be slightly different. My daughter remembered that we bought it at Canadian Tire, too. It turns out I really did pick the exact same colour! We used up an entire gallon on the kibble house, but the water shelter is smaller, so we should have enough left over to do the tree stump bench out by the main garden area, too.

It feels good to have visible, tangible progress done! A lot of the fall clean up work doesn’t look like a lot got accomplished, because things get taken away, rather than added.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: garlic planted, and topping up the high raised bed

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Earlier today, I made a trip into town to hit the hardware store. I found the screws in the size I needed, though the cost was insane. A box with only 100 screws was $12.99 – about $4 more than the last time I got a 100 count box! Still, we’ll be able to finish the water bowl shelter now.

I also picked up a glass cutter. We have one somewhere, but I have no idea what happened to it. While I was in the city yesterday, the girls worked on clearing the broken glass from the inner pane of one of the sun room windows. There are still pieces that are firmly attached at the sides. Until that’s done, we can’t let the cats into the sun room. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that cleaned up soon.

I was really happy to find the lever type door handle I was looking for. Just a simple, inexpensive handle for an interior door. It was easy to install, and it now no longer hurts to open my door!

Later on, my older daughter and I headed out to do some work in the garden, including planting these.

The Nootka Rose garlic on the left are a soft neck garlic. On the right, above the cloves, you can see the hard necks from the middle of the bulbs. They do make it easier to break the cloves apart! The cloves are larger, and there are fewer of them. Of the four bulbs, one of them had only three cloves!

The soft neck garlic has nothing like that in the middle. Just smaller and smaller cloves. I’ve never planted soft neck garlic before. While the hard neck garlic should be planted in the fall, in our climate zone, we can plant soft neck garlic in the spring – but we’re planting both now.

We moved the mulch aside and planted them the same way as the first row we planted a few days ago. The row in the middle of the bed got the hard neck Music variety, because there are fewer of them. Less reaching needed when it’s time to harvest!

After laying out the cloves to see how to space them, the kittens absolutely would not leave them alone! They also really, really wanted to dig in those freshly uncovered rows!

After planting, the rows were lightly covered to reduce compaction while watering – and protect from kitties.

Which didn’t work very well. Several of them started digging in to them to poop! One wouldn’t stop even while being directly spayed with the hose!

*sigh*

We did eventually persuade them to go elsewhere.

With the Nootka Rose garlic, there were enough that we planted only the largest cloves.

The remaining smaller cloves are now in the kitchen for us to taste test. 😊

That done, my daughter did some other clean up and gathering of support poles, while I turned my attention to the high raised bed.

The chard remains were pulled. They’re actually looking better after several frosts then they have all summer, now that there are no longer grasshoppers eating them. We were never able to eat any of it!

As expected, the soil level has dropped a fair bit, as the organic material buried in layers below, settle. It looks like some mice may have been trying to tunnel in one corner.

I have no doubt Rolando Moon has taken care of that problem for us already.

The last of the vines from the squash patch were added for more organic material – then smashed as flat as I could get it before adding fresh soil. The remaining soil sifted from what is now the garlic bed came in quite handy!

It had settled enough that it took three large wheelbarrows full of soil to top it up! I probably could have gotten away with two and a half, but it’s going to continue to settle, so a little extra is fine.

It then got a light, thin mulch of grass clippings before I gave the whole thing a thorough watering. I just want to protect the soil surface, not insulate it. In the spring, the mulch will be removed so the soil can warm up and thaw out faster.

We haven’t decided what to plant here next year, yet, but I think we should give it at least one more year for the upper layers to break down before we try to plant any deep root vegetables in it.

I feel like I’m really behind on preparing the beds for the winter. The girls aren’t able to help as much as usual, either. My younger daughter has been having knee issues to the point that she’s now using a cane to get around the house. She did try to go to a doctor about it, about 2 years ago, but it wasn’t taken seriously because she’s so young. It was already a battle to get her to see a doctor in the first place, so that certainly didn’t help. Anyhow, she does the best she can but, right now I’m actually the most able bodied person in our household. Which is kinda scary, considering how much I’m hurting this year! I didn’t expect my hands to be the main problem, though. Usually it’s my wrecked knees and feet. They’ve actually been relatively good, lately. Either that or the pain in my hands is making it seem like they are better.

Ah, well. We do what we can. It won’t be the end of the world if some beds don’t get weeded before winter and need to be done in the spring. There are other things that are higher on the necessity list.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: harvesting carrots and red onions and cleaning up

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I took advantage of the lovely temperatures (and being in less pain) to do some more clean up in the garden. Earlier in the day, my daughter and I drove into town so she could get a new photo to renew her driver’s license, while I popped across the street to pick up a few things at the grocery store. I was thinking of making a cream of chicken soup and was about to buy some carrots, when I remembered…

We have carrots. They’re just still in the dirt.

So I went over to where the chocolate cherry tomatoes had been planted, and pulled up the Napoli (orange) and Kyoto Red (dark orange) carrots – and a single shallot! I also dug up the red onions from sets that were planted with the yellow pear tomatoes.

The new soil sifter came in handy! 😁

I’m actually surprised that we got so many decent sized carrots. The Kyoto Red were pretty small – there were two I left behind because they’re blooming, and I hope to collect some seeds. I used up the last of the Kyoto Red seeds, but I think I still have some Napoli pelleted seeds left. Those really did far better than I expected.

Then there’s that single, solitary shallot!

There were actually two more, but they also bloomed, and I’m waiting for the seed heads to dry before collection.

As for the red onions…

Most of them aren’t any bigger than the sets we planted in the first place. Given how spindly the greens were, I thought they might be rotted out, or at least soft, but nope: they are quite firm. They’re just really tiny. I think they were simply too shaded by how massive the yellow pear tomatoes got.

I was going to take them in and was trying to figure out where I could lay them out to dry a bit, until I thought to check the weather again.

We’ll be having at least a couple relatively warm nights, and no rain is expected. I just spread them out on the soil sifter and will leave them out overnight. Tomorrow, I should be able to brush the dirt off more easily, before bringing them inside.

With that in mind, I think I’ll soak some of those blue grey speckled tepary beans overnight, to include with some our garden’s carrots and onions in my soup!

Once these were gathered, I worked on taking down the hoops in the main garden area, as well as the mesh and supports over the spinach in the old kitchen garden. The spinach is a loss. They germinated, and then got mostly yellow and stopped growing.

With the mesh and netting, I laid them out as straight as I could on the ground, then rolled them up around whatever straight sticks I had that were long enough.

You wouldn’t believe how difficult that is with a yard full of kittens!

The twine I used got salvaged, too, and the shorter pieces came in very handy to tie off bundles of netting, mesh, supports and hoops.

We have a few more warmer days, and my priority right now is to get the empty bed in the main garden area prepped, and then plant our fall garlic. When we go into the city next for our stock-up shopping, I hope to pick up more hardneck garlic to plant. It’s a bit too late to order them like we have for the past couple of years.

Once that is done, I plan to work on building up some of the beds in the old kitchen garden. I have ideas for those that I hope will work. If I get at least one of those done over the next few days, that will give us a prepared bed to plant any garlic I pick up later on. There’s still the beets to harvest from that garden, but I suspect those will be going straight to compost.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Tree protector, and good roof news!

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Last night, I finished off a section of chicken wire salvaged from row covers from last year’s garden, and made a protector for the ash tree sapling my mother gave me to transplant. I sprayed it with the high visibility paint last night, so it was dry and ready to set up, this morning.

You can’t see them, but it is pegged to the ground.

This should keep it safe from getting eaten by deer or something!

This afternoon, we were outside harvesting our potatoes, which I will share about in my next post. While we were out, I got a message from my brother, on his way home from our mother’s. Once he was home, we were able to talk on the phone.

The short version: my mother agreed to one of the estimates, and provided my brother with cash for the deposit.

We’re getting a new roof.

As expected, she did start to back off and starting saying maybe someone else could pay for half of it. My brother reminded her that if she started playing her games again, he would simply cancel the whole thing and the roof won’t get done. There is a possibility she’ll try again, but if it comes down to it, he will use his Power of Attorney to make sure the company gets paid. She can’t mess around with people like this, but has a long history of it. For now, she is following through with her promise.

While talking to my brother, I told him about how, in her efforts to lure us out here, my mother insisted that this place was “perfect”. We didn’t need anything. We could leave everything behind and move right in, because everything we needed was here. Everything was “perfect”.

Of course, we knew that wasn’t how it would be, but we were still thrown by just how bad we discovered things had gotten. As I put it to my brother, my mother didn’t keep up her end of the bargain, in her efforts to get us to move out here. Now her habit of making promises, then backing out of them when it came time to follow through, is costing her thousands of dollars more than if she had followed through on the roof situation back in 2019.

There is one possible thing we can do to help with that, though. Since the court ruled against our vandal (and he now owes me $500 in court costs), he had 30 days to appeal. I’m not sure if that was 30 calendar days or 30 business days. Either way, I’ve not been served with anything. Which means we might be able to get a scrap dealer out here to get rid of the old cars and other metal junk our vandal was trying to get money from me for. I don’t expect we’d get more than a few hundred dollars out of it, but who knows. It’s not something we’d do until spring, though.

The main thing is, we’re getting a much needed new roof. The work will likely be done in November, though their schedule might allow for something in October. We shall see.

I’ve sent an email and phoned the company to start the ball rolling. I hope to hear from them tomorrow, though they might contact my brother directly for the financial part of it, first.

I wish I could say I feel relieved, but I probably won’t feel that until the work is done and paid for!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: some progress, and a little harvest

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It’s just past 10pm as I start this, and we’re still at 21C/70F, and the higher winds of earlier today have died down to a lovely calm. I found myself looking for reasons to get the fire going, but I really need to get some sleep tonight! Sleep has been frequently interrupted for the past while. 😕

Lack of sleep wiped me out enough that I was feeling quite ill this morning, to the girls took care of feeding the critters so I could try and get at least a couple of hours in. With Leyendecker still in recovery in my room (no, he wasn’t the one keeping me up at night!), and my daughters still having their days and nights reversed, my younger daughter has been taking her “night shift” and sleeping in my room, to keep and ear out on Leyendecker while I’m out. (He seems to be doing all right, though still having difficulties voiding, so we are monitoring him very closely) In the end, it was almost noon before I finally was able to head outside and do my rounds – minus the critter feeding.

Of course, a fair amount of that is spent checking things in the garden. Things like this.

Here we are, into September, and the Red Noodle beans are just starting to show flower buds!

This Kakai hulless squash was the first to develop and is looking like it’s ripe – but it’s about a quarter the size it should be. If the weather holds, there’s a chance we’ll have a couple more, larger ones. In fact, all the hulless pumpkins are going rather well, compared to the other winter squash. Only the Baby Pam pumpkins are managing as well. The Lady Godiva should give us at least 2 fully developed squash by the end of the growing season, with a few more little ones developing. Likewise, the Styrian variety has a couple large pumpkins that should be harvestable by the time growing season is done, with a couple more developing.

As for the Baby Pam, we have a little few bright orange pumpkins that could probably be harvested, that are smaller than they should be, but there are others that are still growing and turning colour that look like they will reach their full size – which isn’t very large to begin with.

This Georgia Candy Roaster is one of two stunted plants that were just covered in slug trails this morning!

While watering this evening, I was amazed to find female flowers among the Georgia Candy Roaster, and even one Winter Sweet. I hand pollinated them, just in case, but I think it was too late for one of the Georgia Candy Roasters.

While harvesting, I was surprised by how many Yellow Pear and Chocolate Cheery tomatoes were ready. I took the few G-Star patty pans that were on the plant killed off by a cut worm.

A few more of the Cup of Moldova tomatoes were ripe enough to pick, and into the freezer the went, with the others needing to be processed.

I keep saying I need to get those done, but the fact that they are in the freezer actually frees me up to work on other things. But that will be in my next post!

As for the garden, it’s a waiting game. So far, we’re not looking to have cold temperatures or frost for the rest of the month. With our first average frost date on Sept. 10, that is very encouraging. I plan to do recordings for another garden tour video on that date. Hopefully, thing weather will hold and things will have time to catch up.

I’d really like a chance to try those red noodle beans!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: first tassels and first tomatoes!

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While doing my evening rounds this morning, I spotted the first tassels on the kulli corn!

I got this picture by standing with my arms up as high as I could reach. I did not zoom in at all. I think at least a couple of the kulli corn have reached their 8′ potential height!

Still no signs of silks, though.

Going through the garden beds with one of my daughters later on, we were looking at the sweet corn, which has lots of tassels, and the popcorn. The little bitty Tom Thumb popcorn plants are not only showing lots of tassels, but I actually spotted some silks in one of them! The doubt the plant it was on was even a foot high. They only need 60 days to maturity, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, except for how drowned out they got this spring.

When checking the tomatoes in the main garden area, I was noticing some were looking like they were about to crack, and I think some were even missing. So we decided to harvest the most ripe ones. Yes, we’ve picked a few tomatoes here and there already, but this is our first real harvest of them!

The Cup of Moldova are on the right, Sophie’s Choice on the left. There are still plenty more on the vines that are completely green, or just starting to blush.

My daughter found a couple really ripe ones that were so small, they would have fallen through the holes in the containers we were using. Pocket tomatoes! 😄

Once inside, they got nestled into shredded paper. With so much less of the Sophie’s Choice tomatoes, they got transferred to a smaller bin.

They can now sit in the relative cool and indirect light of the old kitchen to finish ripening, safe from cats!

The girls will be prepping the kitchen and dining table for when we’re ready to start canning the tomatoes. Hopefully, they’ll find my small batch canning recipe book in the process. It’s bugging me, now that I can’t find it! I know where it should be, but it isn’t there!

We talked about pickling the beans I picked this morning, with the recipe from another book I found for that, but they might just blanch and freeze them, instead. It depends on how things go for them tonight. My older daughter has commissions to work on, of course, so most of that job will be falling on my younger daughter.

Today has been a very fruitful day out of the garden, and with so many setbacks this year, I am incredibly grateful.

The Re-Farmer

August garden tour (video)

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Oh, my goodness. This took way more time and effort to make than usual! Starting with going back later in the day to record new video because I made too many goofs, the first time around. I mean, how did I accidentally say “corn” when I meant to say “peas”? Repeatedly!! 😂

It also took all day to upload the file. Yes, it’s more than half an hour long, but it still shouldn’t have taken more than 8 hours to upload.

But, here it is. A tour of our garden, including fruit trees this time. It’s been a very rough year for the garden, with some complete losses, but we do still have something to show for it, at least!

I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to let me know what you think!

Today’s progress

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I managed to get a few things at least partially accomplished today.

It’s been put off for way too long, for various reasons, but we really needed to get a burn done. The burn barrel is getting to the point that we won’t be able to use it for much longer; it’s simply disintegrating on one side. So the wood pellet cat litter is being put into the metal fire ring I set up near it, to burn the things that wouldn’t fit in the burn barrel. It was getting too full.

Doing a burn in what turned out to be 26C/79F – not even the hottest part of the day – was not going to be fun. Some time ago, while cleaning out the sun room and the old kitchen, we found the parts of a beach umbrella.

They were not together when we found them. 🤨

So I grabbed the pencil tip iron bar I found somewhere else (I can’t even remember, anymore) and used it to make a hole for the umbrella post. The iron bar is only a couple of feet long, but the ground in the outer yard is a lot softer than the inner yard, so it worked rather well. It wasn’t much, but it at least gave me some shade to duck into in between tending the fires in both the barrel and the fire ring.

When it got to the point where I could cover them and leave them to smolder, I puttered around with a few other things. Some of the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes at the chain link fence needed some supports added to them. Then I set the bench I made on the saw horses to clean off the roughest edges with the wood shaver and sand paper, and took a scrub brush to get the dirt off the bottoms of the legs. I went through two sanding sponges in the process. They got torn to shreds, but at least things are smooth enough not to cause injury, even after being painted.

The bench then got hosed down and is now sitting upside down on the saw horses to dry, before it gets its first coat of paint. The underside probably won’t get more than one coat, except for where it will come in contact with the ground.

That done, I moved on to the Yellow Pear tomato bed. Some of them were getting tall enough to add more support there, too.

After that, I moved on to the main garden area.

Three of the four apple gourds are getting pretty tall and starting to climb the poles next to them. I attached pairs of bamboo poles as cross pieces between the three poles, so they’ll have horizontal support as they grow bigger. Only one of the apple gourds is tall enough to actually benefit from the new support, but the other two should be there, soon. As for the fourth plant, it is so small, it’s barely visible over the cardboard mulch!

That done, I decided to water the squash patch – then ended up watering the whole area. For the first time this year, I set up a sprinkler to water the garden. Usually, I just water it myself, but I wanted to work on something else at the same time.

I did find a lovely surprise that wasn’t there this morning!

Our very first tomato that is starting to turn red!

There is one other that has just the lightest blush on it. Both are Sophie’s Choice tomatoes.

Woo hoo!

While the garden was being watered, I started scything nearby.

This is as far as I got. We’d reached our high of 28C/82F by then, and it was just too hot. On top of that, there is a lot of alfalfa in the first couple of swathes, and that stuff does not cut as easily. It also tends to get hung up on the blade. When scything, the cut grass gets pulled along with the blade and deposited in windrows – if all goes well. It did not go well! I found myself dragging cut material back again, and it just did not want to let go! Also, the ground is so rough, I couldn’t slide the blade smoothly across. I had to hold it higher up. All of which made the job a lot more difficult. Which I would have been okay with, if it weren’t for the heat!

So I moved on to another job.

I started using the loppers on the trees by the garden plots. I started cleaning up these trees from the other end… last spring? The spring before? *sigh* I’m losing track of time! 😆 In the above photo, I’d cleared some branches away from the end. This will make it easier to get under there and scythe later one. However, as I kept moving the sprinkler down the garden beds, I was able to work on an area that needed pruning more. You can just barely see the grow bags in the photo. There were some fairly large, bushy branches above them that I wanted to clear out. I did enough to clear the space above the grow bags before stopping. While the sprinkler was set up over the last beds in this area, I watered where the trellises are from the rain barrel with a watering can. The water was quite warm! Then I got a bit more pruning done while refilling the barrel with the hose.

It was a bit all over the place, but it still managed to be a productive day, even with the heat.

Our forecasts have been all over the place. First, I was seeing thunderstorm warnings for Tuesday (today is Saturday). Then for Monday. Then for tomorrow morning! Meanwhile, another app is saying we’re going to get light rain tonight and tomorrow. Looking at the weather radar, however, it looks like the system is going to pass to the north of us. We’ll see if we get any rain at all! At least it will cool things down and if things work out, I’ll try scything after it rains. From what I’ve looked up, scythes cut better when the grass is wet, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test that, yet.

We shall see what tomorrow brings us.

Oh, my goodness! Is that thunder I hear? Why, yes. Yes it is.

So much for the weather radar being accurate!

The Re-Farmer

Just made it

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Today turned out to be quite pleasant out. Though we had some rain last night, it wasn’t enough to refill the areas that were turned into pools not long ago. More rain was being predicted, however, so today was dedicated to trying to get the lawn mowed! Especially some of the area that have been neglected, due to the conditions.

I was able to get more done around the outhouse, and some of the area behind the three low raised beds near the compost ring. I also got some of the area in the spruce grove cleared. Nowhere near what needs to be done, but I at least cleared the stumps from the dead trees I cut down last year. The grass and weeds were so tall, the stumps were completely hidden, as was a tree top that fell in high winds a while back. That needs to be dragged out to the branch pile for chipping. It’s next to the dead tree marked with an orange X in the background. We’ve done no clean up in the spruce grove at all this year. The spirea is reclaiming much of it, even though I pulled them out by the roots as much as possible. They spread so fast! The Saskatoon berries can be picked, but they’re hard to get to with the undergrowth. Plus, the deer at the lower branches and twigs, so the only berries are way up high. The bushes are flexible and can be bent down to reach. I’ve made no effort to gather any. I’ve tasted some, and they’re not very good this year. Plus, a lot of them have … stuff… on them. Some, it looks like an orange powder. Others, it’s a tan colour that look like spores. Things like that. We had only one good year of berries since we uncovered them, but it looks like whatever fungus or mold or whatever that has been affecting the Saskatoons in other areas has hit these ones, too. I think we’re just going to have to bite the bullet, take them out completely, and buy healthy trees – making sure to plant them well away from where they are now! I’d had to plant new trees, only for them to get hit by something in the soil that’s making these ones sickly.

As for the stumps, we won’t be making them into benches or tables until after the dead trees around them are cut down, but I can still prep them. At the very least, I want to cut the tops straight, and debark them. Maybe apply some paint to the top to keep them from getting wet and rotting before we can attach things to them.

I FINALLY managed to mow most of the space in the maple grove. Well. Not most. We can access the branch piles now, at least. The other half will wait for another day.

I finally remembered to take a “before” picture, of sorts. It’s always so incredibly difficult to mow here, because of how uneven the ground is. Last year, I used the weed trimmer, rather than put the mower through it. Not an option, this time. It’s hard to tell, but in the background is where we tried to grow purple corn last year. The ground still has “hills” where the rows were, so I wasn’t able to mow there before. Some of the greenery in there was taller than me.

I managed to get that section done, just as it was starting to rain.

Normally, we would have all that area in the background mowed, too, but this is as far as we’re going to do, this year.

I estimate it took about 5-6 hours of mowing time for what I got done. That included mowing the paths to the Korean Pine trees. It’s been a while since we’ve made our way out there. I had to stop and uncover several of them to pull the weeds that grew up around them. The covers we’re using are not very high, so the weeds ended up filling the space. The covers are working well, but they are already getting to be too small. The saplings are touching the tops already. The one that got dug up by a critter, then replanted, is most certainly dead, though. One loss isn’t too bad, though. It could have been much worse!

Along with the rest of the maple grove, I still need to mow the other side of the garden area, and the parts of the outer yard where we drive that I’d been able to mow before. I won’t have enough fuel to finish the job, though. Any gas budget we have left is needed for the van or my mother’s car, so I won’t be getting more until pay comes in, but that’s just a few days away. It’s unlikely I’ll have another chance to mow anytime soon, though; we’re supposed to get thunderstorms over the next two days, then rain after that. I’m glad I got as much done as I did! It’s been quite frustrating, not to be able to get the work down outside that I’ve been wanting to. It feels good to get even this little bit done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: things are trying to grow

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My daughters were sweethearts and took care of feeding the cats outside for me, as I’m still feeling pretty unstable, so the cats weren’t out and about by the time I headed outside. I did get to briefly pet a kitten, though! :-D

While checking out the garden, there was some new progress – and a bit of deer damage – to find.

The Carminat beans are reaching the top of the trellis, and you can see their flower buds. At my fingers, however, you can see the stem of a missing leaf! There was a vertical row of missing leaves, a few feet along the trellis. Right about deer height! Time to find more noise makers and flashy things to set up.

On this side of the trellis are the Seychelles beans, which are starting to get pretty tall, too. None of them show deer damage, which is good, since less of them germinated. In the foreground are the self seeded (or should I say, bird-seeded) sunflowers that I left to grow. The beans can climb them, too! With the flooding this spring, we did not plant any of the Hopi black dye or Mongolian Giant sunflower seeds we’d collected from last year, so I don’t mind letting these one grow. These would be the black oil seed that we put out for the birds in the summer. We’re finding them all over the place, thanks to being spread by birds!

The first sowing of shelling peas may be about half the size they should be, but they are loaded with pods. At least on the north end of the pea trellis. Towards the south end, the sugar snap peas are barely surviving, and the shelling peas on the other side of the trellis are much weaker, too. The entire trellis gets an equal amount of sunlight, so this would be a reflection of soil conditions.

This should be the last year we use this spot for growing vegetables. Next year, they’ll be moved closer to the house, and this area will be made available for planting fruit or nut trees. We haven’t decided what to get next, yet.

The cucumber row is a mixed bag of plants that are growing nice and big, and filled with little cucumbers, and others that are barely bigger than when they were first transplanted!

I had an adorable find at the big trellis.

We have a first Tennessee Dancing gourd developing! It is so cute!

The beans on the same side as the dancing gourds are the red noodle beans. The plants are pretty large, but they are still not at the point of climbing. The shelling beans on the other side, however…

The are much smaller, but have tendrils climbing the trellis, and have even started to bloom!

The most adorable little pollinator showed up just as I was taking the picture.

I startled a bee when checking out this HUGE pumpkin flower.

Yes, it’s on a giant pumpkin plant. 😁

I’d seen some female flowers previously, but now I can’t find them, so there are no pumpkins starting to form, yet. While we are not shooting for super big pumpkins, and won’t be pruning them down to just one pumpkin per plant, it feels like it’s too late in the season for any giant pumpkins to mature. We’re near the end of July already, and none have formed, yet!

In the south yard, we finally have Chocolate cherry tomatoes! Just this one plant, yet. Of the 4 varieties we planted this year, the Chocolate cherry have been the most behind – and they are planted where tomatoes had done so well, last year. The plants themselves are getting nice and tall, and we’ve been adding supports and pruning them as needed, but there are much fewer flowers blooming, and only today do we finally have tomatoes forming. Thankfully, the other varieties are much further along.

I also spotted some ground cherry fruit forming! These plants are doing remarkably well, given how much water they had to deal with this spring. It took a while, but not they are quite robust plants, and I’m happy to see them setting fruit!

Hopefully, it won’t be too much longer before we start getting actual food from the garden. Everything is so, so behind, I am extra happy to see progress like this.

The Re-Farmer